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News Office
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, Massachusetts

JANUARY 23, 2003

Hawking muses on ultimate theory of the universe
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In a live broadcast from England to several classrooms at MIT,
physicist Stephen Hawking described scientists' search for a complete 
theory of the universe, ultimately concluding that "maybe [such a 
theory] isn't possible."

"Some people will be very [disappointed] if there is not an ultimate 
theory," Hawking said. "I belong to that camp, but I have changed my 
mind." We will "always have the challenge of new discovery. Without 
it, we will stagnate. Long may the search continue."

The broadcast, which was marred by technical problems with video and 
especially audio, was also available as a webcast.  It was sponsored 
by the Cambridge-MIT Institute (CMI), a three-year-old strategic 
alliance between the University of Cambridge in England and MIT. CMI's 
mission is to deliver education and research that enhance the 
competitiveness of U.K. business.

Hawking essentially gave a brief history of particle physics, focusing 
on the key scientists and theories in the field from Aristotle to 
Stephen Weinberg (a Nobel laureate born in 1933).

The Maxwell and Dirac equations, for example, "govern most of physics 
and all of chemistry and biology," Hawking said.  "So in principle we 
should be able to predict human behavior, though I can't say I've had 
much success myself," he said to chuckles from the audience.

The human brain contains too many particles for us to do the equations 
necessary to predict behavior, he continued. We may someday be able to 
predict the behavior of the nematode worm, however, "which may be 
comforting."

All of the theories developed so far to explain the universe "are both 
inconsistent or incomplete," Hawking said. He went on to discuss why 
it may not be possible to develop one complete theory of the universe, 
basing his argument on the work of Kurt Gödel. The Czech mathematician 
showed that within any branch of mathematics some propositions cannot
be proven true or false. 

Hawking, author of the best-seller "A Brief History of Time," is the 
Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge.

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